Sunday, August 05, 2007

Faux Long Weekending

I have discovered an interesting fact. If you do nothing on Saturday that resembles what you would normally do on a Saturday (shopping) then you have the impression that it's Sunday. Then, on Saturday evening, instead of thinking woefully that the next day is Monday and work, you suddenly remember it's only Saturday and you have the whole of the real Sunday to go before Monday.

It's like adding a day to your weekend. You do have to be in France though for this to work, as the shops are all shut here on Sundays. It helps too if you have previously done your shopping so you don't starve during the weekend and then be desperate for Monday to arrive so you can eat again. That would rather spoil the effect.

This is my first weekend home alone since I got back from holiday, and I must say, it's amazing how productive one can be. So far I have* tidied my trousers shelf* sorted out clothes for charity* discovered a yoga DVD and followed the simple exercises twice* done cleaning and all the ironing* worked on my booketc...

The work I'm doing on my book is essentially chronological, but also crap-shooting. Originally, I wrote it from beginning to end. Then I added a whole section near the beginning which rendered some of the later writing obsolete because it no longer made chronological sense. I'm having to cut swathes of stuff out for this reason and also because I now dislike some of the original writing and am replacing it with, hopefully, better text and dialogue.

The main characters of the book are Eleanor - a Brit living in France (gosh, who'd have thought), John - an American businessman living in NYC (although I'm thinking of changing his name to Tarquin.... just kidding...), Eleanor's friend Krista who thinks John is a headcase, Eleanor's sister Rachel who's a right cow, John's younger brother Matthew who's a miserable bugger, and John's friend Chris with whom John meets in bars to admire arses and legs, and to chat. It's not a comedy, but it's supposed to have a decent amount of humour. I, you might be relieved to know, am not a miserable bugger, so I don't write like one!

(That was... my post on book progress thus fulfilling my statuary requirements as stated beneath the blog title to keep you posted...)

6 comments:

Love the Tarquin idea. Torquil was one of my 19 suggested names for my son -- which were all panned. If you want to add a twist, you could always spell his name Jon... Americans love to shorten names...

I love your way of getting another day out of the weekend! On Sunday's we're expected to live off the exceptional boulangerie that's open!

Minter's idea of Jon is becoming....so gald you are trimming - one thing is sure that when you write - if you dash off all your ideas, then come back later to "trim", the result is really encouraging, and gives the same kind of impression the reader will have when he gets his little hands on your work of art.

Now, I did not get you painting - but you got me writing! In my head enormously, on my pc much less. But it's a book for me, just for me, private prose to get rid of bumps and bangs....which is sometimes what writing is about.

The long weekend is so true...since I have been nailed down and ordered to do absolutely nothing my life seems like a cosy slow running river, full of interesting slowly absorbed eco-lives.....days are longer, calmer, and weekends last a whole week. it's super.

I quite agree, Minter, and mine will probably never see the light of a hardback. I was being silly when refering to my statutory requirements... My blog blurb says my blog is about book progress amongst other things, so I feel I should, sometimes, write about my book progress, and when I do, I remark on it. It's an in-joke I suppose, with me the only 'in' person... :D